


a tale of a spinster

by n_owsy



Series: Tales of the SMP: Extended [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 2020 L'Manberg Election on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Ficlet, Gen, Insane Wilbur Soot, L'Manberg War of Independence on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Mythology - Freeform, Mythology References, Pre-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), References to Canon, Wilbur Soot Angst, Wilbur Soot is Not Okay, Wilbur Soot-centric, anyways its not even that deep i just tie it to a myth, catch me waking up in the morning to write 2k more words in :), does this count as purple prose or am i being too confident, everybody else in the tags arent actually part of the story, no beta we die like tubbo in the festival, not much dialogue, theyre just mentioned bc theyre relevant, today i bring you some semblance of sbi family dynamic, tomorrow? who knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28401150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_owsy/pseuds/n_owsy
Summary: There is a tale of a spinster with her necklace of pearls and her comb of silver.And it is the tale among everything else that he remembers as he dies on the spot, with blood and tears seeping into his father’s clothes as Phil cries his grief and his pain for all of the land to hear — and it is a broken legacy that he leaves behind for someone else to bear.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Series: Tales of the SMP: Extended [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2080074
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	a tale of a spinster

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: the filipino (bukidnon) version of the moon and stars cosmology myth.
> 
> “One day in the times when the sky was close to the ground, a spinster went out to pound rice. Before she began her work, she took off the beads from around her neck and the comb from her hair, and hung them on the sky, which at that time — looked like coral rock.
> 
> Then she began working, and each time that she raised her pestle into the air, it struck the sky. For some time she pounded the rice, and then she raised the pestle so high that it struck the sky very hard.
> 
> Immediately the sky began to rise, and it went up so far that she lost her ornaments. Never did they come down, for the comb became the moon and the beads are the stars that are scattered about.”
> 
> (yes it’s this short. yes i chose this for a reason — and that involves a huge huge room for interpretive writing n just some rambling on how cool it is that it was an accidental masterpiece. yes theres another variant about how this is a myth were the spinster valued her looks more, and did the pounding of the rice really fast so she could go home faster — essentially this was a cautionary tale, but i chose this version instead. cry about it.)

The tale of a faceless, nameless spinster is a tale many have forgotten.

But it is the only one he fully recalls out of the dozens of tales that Phil whispers to him under a blanket with grass on his back, large wings surrounding him and keeping him safe; his eyes set on the starry sky.

* * *

It is his first day out in the fields of the Greater Dream SMP, exploring a new, foreign world with a child - _his brother_ \- behind his heels.

The sun is uncomfortable on his face, but he uses his hand as a shade as he squints in the distance. His feet step over the unfamiliar forest floor he’d spawned in, catching on unfamiliar roots and overgrown tangled blades of grass. He listens attentively while Tommy follows behind him, complaining loudly as they stumble out the forest to find a small, clear plot of land.

He raises an eyebrow and mentally surveys the rest of the place as the teenager picks leaves out of his hair. In his grumbling, Tommy bumps into him.

”Hey! What the hell, man?”

Wilbur huffs as he pushes the gremlin away, and steadies him. “Watch your step,” he snarks as he looks over the quiet meadow they found and smiles warmly. “Just... this would seem like a perfect place to start up a base, yeah?” He steps out, feeling uncharacteristically cheerful even in the oppressive heat.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “Great,” he snarks as he stays behind in the shade of the trees. “Am I supposed to wait for you to start building that retirement home?”

”No, but you could come back later for the illegal potion thing.”

He grins on the inside as Tommy gets that glint in his eyes. _Hook, line and sinker._ “Hmm... drug empire, you say?”

”I mean... it is technically a potion cartel, but whatever you say. Isn’t it past your bedtime, now?”

Tommy tries to hit him on the shoulder, and he dodges, snickering as he gives up and starts walking back to his base. “Shut up,” the blond calls out, affronted. “I am a big man, I do not have a bedtime curfew, _shut up, Wil,_ it is literally two fucking o’ clock in the fucking afternoon.”

He brings up a couple of blocks from his inventory and shrugs as he hears the steps get more muffled as Tommy walks further and further away.

It’s always great to start off in a new world with a base of operations — and in accordance with his upbringing by Philza, a man who was always in hardcore mode — he gets to working on it fast.

It is a field, a meadow — a plot of land that isn’t any special, any different, any unique.

Nothing distinctive, nothing that set it apart from the rest.

But it is the land that he claims as his own, and this is where it started.

* * *

The stars twinkle down at him.

And Wilbur starts to remember as he sits on top of the Camarvan with the Declaration of Independence in his hand and his coat whipping in the wind.

It is cold, and it is late in the night. He feels like a child again, with sleepiness and tiredness hooking under his eyelids and lulling him to a deep, deep sleep in order to shield him from living out all these kinds of senseless, worthless violence.

But he laughs at that thought. L’Manberg was worth fighting for — and while they might’ve had a humble, criminal beginning — it was his masterpiece, one he will fight for, one he will cherish and one he will wrap up in his heart for him to selfishly keep to himself.

There is something calm and peaceful about the meadows — with the stars softly twinkling, the leaves of their redwood trees rustling and the crickets chirping — and he basks in that moment alone.

_He remembers that the lady walked to the fields that one night in the times when the sky longed for the ground, with a mortar in one arm and a pestle in the other._

_He remembers that it was the calm before the storm — the build-up of a story to the final chapter._

* * *

_Pound._

It is a war they fight, and it is not easy to win. 

_Rise_.

“Come with me,” Eret says, with urgency in his voice, his shades cracked as his glowing eyes peek through. It doesn’t match his expression, Wilbur thinks. He looks frantic, subdued and mournful. Regretful. “I can take you to my final control room.”

 _Pound_.

Hollow promises, and empty chests. The walls of his control room shake — and slowly lift to reveal their executioners. Wilbur’s heart drops to his stomach as he tries to shield Tommy, Tubbo and Fundy from the bloodshed. 

“It was never meant to be.”

* * *

There is a brief moment of silence as Wilbur strolls through L’Manberg — alive and well. Battered, but not destroyed.

They lived to survive another day.

And he breathes in relief — and he takes in all the air he can now that it is done, finished and over.

_(Maybe she does it in a moment of weakness in the middle of working, but she takes the pearl necklace from her neck and the silver comb from her hair, and she hangs them on the sky.)_

And maybe Wilbur does the same. It is a relief to be smiling freely and to live another day. So he lets go of L’Manberg, the war and everything else, for a brief moment — and allows himself another moment of weakness in the bloodshed.

* * *

Every strike of the pestle against the grains of rice in the metaphorical mortar — it is something he thinks is symbolic of the struggles he faces while fighting for his masterpiece — L’Manberg. 

He rises from the ashes of that betrayal that leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, and comes back to fight it again. He wins the war of independence for his small, small country, and he watched as the traitor build a castle far, far away.

He welcomes people in with open arms and a fierce, fierce pride that blooms in his chest for them all. He runs an election that he admits is unfair for some — but it is what he ultimately thinks is the best option for his country.

And it is when he pores over libraries in the villages, looking over books and such as he dutifully writes down important details in order to improve his country that he thinks of the land he is so proud of — and how carefully neutral the spinster was in the legend over the accidental masterpiece she pulled off.

And he mulls it over. Her masterpiece — the moon and the stars, however accidental — changed the world. And so will his.

But why did it seem like she just walked away, and didn’t care?

Maybe because nobody thought enough of her to write it down — or maybe it was erased from the word of mouth for some bizarre reason. Whatever the case, Wilbur secretly resolves to make sure that this world — and beyond — will know of his pride and joy as the leader of a great nation.

* * *

He has gone through so much — and he has won so much, and he thinks that maybe he’ll finish his goal and make his masterpiece flourish more. Maybe he’s closer to making his way to grounding the final grains of rice than the pestle is to messing up and colliding with the sky.

But there comes the time when the spinster overestimates her ability — or her power or her strength, because Wilbur doesn’t recall any other significant physical traits about the lady out in the rice fields — but the pestle she holds rises up high, high and high above and collides with the sky. And it is the time where the sky takes her precious, precious possessions with it. 

Schlatt rises up, the shadow of his horns towering over them. There is nothing significant about that small loss, but Wilbur feels something sink in him as he announces the turn in votes, as a silent threat hangs over their heads like a guillotine — and Schlatt takes L’Manberg with him.

* * *

_Pound._

Tommy runs first.

_Rise._

Wilbur follows, and runs soon after.

_Pound._

But between them both? It is Wilbur who falls first to an axe.

* * *

There are two things out of everything else that bothers him, and makes him want to scratch at himself until those problems bleed away.

One: he is predictable, and everybody who is anybody knows it. They memorized his ticks, his habits and his triggers — and it fucking pisses him off that everyone gets to hold it on top of his head.

Two: He is easy to set off when he lives like everybody around him has a finger on the trigger of a loaded gun held to his temple.

And he hates it.

Here he is, begging for some semblance of normal, some semblance of peace, some semblance of love and some semblance of support. He’s alone down in the caverns of Pogtopia — wandering and wandering the ravine as Tommy leaves his side for another adventure in the lands above. 

He talks to people, and he confides with his friends and allies. And he despises it, and resolves to shut the fuck up.

Because Wilbur can tell that it was all faked behind paper-thin masks of pity, concern and loathing — and he can hear the voices in his own head whisper from behind his back as he handles a couple stacks of dynamite handed to him by Dream: _a paranoid old wretch with his time long gone — his time of glory dead and forgotten._

He thinks but he can’t make sense of things, of how it all went wrong and of how he messed it up. He just wanted the best for everyone. But he messed it up _somehow_ and it drives him mad, it drives him _crazy —_ that nobody else other than him seems to care.

And he remembers something unimportant. A remnant of a tale shoved in the back of his mind with half-formed memories and forgotten promises.

_(He remembers how the lady didn’t notice how her hand caused the sky to rise.)_

And he promptly gets angry, almost upturning a chest as he huffs and strides faster. Why? Why was the spinster’s accidental masterpiece so well taken care of, untouchable and perfect — while he had to fight, cry and die just to take and keep care of something he worked hard to cherish?

( _But here’s the thing._  


_Wilbur, as self-aware he is - Wilbur doesn’t notice how his hand caused L’Manberg to fall._ )

* * *

And it came to a head one day.

He smiles like a shark tasting blood in the water _(and he absolutely hates it)_ , and refuses to wear armor. 

There is war paint on some of his allies’ faces — bloody splotches on pale faces that stood out like paint on a marble statue’s grim face as they march for the dead, dead land. His brothers stand with him, and for one last time — he feels like he’s on the top of the world again.

( _But there are chains that hook over his arms and barbs that sink into the flesh of his shoulders, and he wakes up from that small bubble of blissful ignorance soon enough as he sees that his source of pride and happiness — is gone._ )

And then it’s all over.

But here’s the thing about a coup — whether the intentions are something as human as greed and want for power or something as noble as standing up for what was right and what was good — a coup-won leadership would be corrupt by nature.

Tubbo? Sure, he’s a good lad. A model citizen, and one that refused to die for his country.

He lived for it instead. 

But here’s the thing: with the war won and leaving nothing behind but a nation on its’ knees, the golden age’s ideas of freedom and liberty lost in senseless violence and trampled under tyrannical rule — he thinks that he’s useless. Disposable. 

Weak.

And just like his country — well, and truly dead.

_The sky began to rise as the pestle collided with it — and it went up so far that she lost her ornaments. Never did they come down, for the comb became the moon — and the pearls on the necklace broke to become the stars scattered about the night sky._

* * *

_And so, she looked up — and saw the moon for the first time, hanging from the sky and glowing with soft, soft light. The stars were scattered and strewn across the heavens, lighting it all up and illuminating the darkness — an accidental masterpiece staged by the gods for the entire world to see. _

_ And maybe it was meant to be. _

But Wilbur — he stands back as he looks down upon his unfinished symphony, his ruined masterpiece and takes it all in. L’Manberg was always his work and his blood, sweat and tears poured into it, and it is something special that will die with him — something he will wrap up in a vengeful heart of madness and take, drag and keep to the grave with him.

And if he can’t take it with him — cursed to look from afar as it crashes, falls and tries to build itself up again?   


Wilbur is human.

And he is selfish.

He’ll stand back, and make sure to leave a mark of himself on his tainted masterpiece — forever unfinished, and forever unreachable and it is the hill that he dies on as he looks to his father who never gave him enough attention and love in comparison to the others, with crazed eyes and hands him a sword.

“You’re my son,” Phil says with such pain that for a moment, he lets himself believe.

But he laughs in his father’s face. Does a family dynamic — does any kind of blood relation really matter here? Does he really think that he will be be fooled? Phil is hesitant — but he holds his sword like he’s ready to swing it, like the blade hungers for blood to be spilled. So what else does his father want from him before he goes?

His pride? If that’s what he wants, the one thing he has with him and will die with him, then so be it.

He goes down on his knees. Wilbur begs and he begs on his knees with tears in his eyes as he begs his father to take his last life, feeling desperately disgusted with himself for all the pain and bloodshed he caused because he was too greedy, too corrupted and too human.

For a second, he lets himself wonder. _What did the spinster think at the moment she saw her jewelry spilled across the heavens as a masterpiece claimed by the gods? Was she angry? Was she regretful of her decision?_  


_Or did she do what Wilbur did — stare with awe into the beautiful, fading colors of the supernovas painted in bright yellow, red and orange that ate away at his unfinished, corrupted masterpiece that he could never find again?_

Maybe it was divine intervention staged by the gods.

* * *

Or maybe it wasn’t just meant to be at all.

* * *

_And so the spinster walks away, and fades into oblivion with a small, barely-remembered legacy she left behind._

And it is the tale among everything else that he remembers as he dies on the spot, with blood and tears seeping into his father’s clothes as Phil cries for the land to hear — and it is a broken legacy that he leaves behind for someone else to bear.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m sorry, i’ll try to rewrite it to make it more clearer — this is clearly more rambling than a character study, lol. am i really this disorganized? yes.
> 
> does this make sense? not gonna lie — it doesn’t even make sense to me. i just tied it all together about masterpieces and finished work because the bukidnon myth is so carefully neutral and short in comparison to other myths that i know that it actually kinda drove me insane trying to wrangle some kinda story out of it, but it gave me a lot of room to write — so props :) the spinster doesn’t even have a name.
> 
> edit: if anybody cared enough to search it up and corrected me “but izzy she does have a name, it’s _maria_ , did you actually bother searching or” yes i know it’s maria, it was the first result, but i hate christianized versions of myths. i had to do some careful digging and found like three variants of this myth, including the one i put up above, and i used the neutral one because it gave me a lot of room for writing something completely unrelated.
> 
> how do i know it’s christianized? “maria” is a name commonly inserted during the spanish misinformation campaign in an attempt to assert christianity as the superior religion in colonial times. sheesh. we had like a millennia of these cultural traditions... and shame on the spaniards because even the ones that survived four centuries of colonization were christianized or culturally imported. mfers.
> 
> if you made it this far into my senseless and repetitive writing — consider leaving a kudos, comment or a bookmark. idk i’d like to know what y’all think about this one because if you can’t tell: _i love rambling into my stories rather than actually writing them_ and maybe that rambling could use some help so that it’s easier to read
> 
> ngl i dont really leave an actual reason for why i choose that myth to tie down — it’s just interesting to see something accidental as a spinster’s hand struck the sky so hard that it triggered something permanent and beautiful behind from the lenses of an ambitious wilbur who fought hard to keep his masterpiece intact.
> 
> edit: after the 3rd episode of he tales of the smp, i genuinely can’t tell you how i was like. so fucking proud. fic is still relevant — long after the great discs war fade into obscurity. they don’t even retain wilbur’s name. this is so heartbreaking (but mostly funny to me i cant believe my character study is still relevant lmaooooo)


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